Letters

Wise councils

No one would claim that local government is perfect, or that councils do not need continually to strive to raise their game; but Jackie Ashley vastly overstates the case in relation to local government "corruption and incompetence" (Three parties, but just one reactionary mantra, October 11).

In respect of the former, both the Nolan committee on standards in public life and the Audit Commission have confirmed that high standards of probity are the rule. Where incompetence is concerned, what in local government in the past 15 years has matched the series of financial disasters perpetrated by central government, ranging from the poll tax to BSE, rail privatisation, the original shambles of the Child Support Agency, cost overruns at the Millennium Dome, the British Library, Portcullis House and in defence procurement?

It is true that sometimes systemic failings necessitate "new national laws". But it is also true that much of what is now national policy began with local council initiatives, for example concessionary travel, nursery education or domiciliary care for the elderly. What local councils seek is a new generation of local public service agreements with central government and other partners to deliver jointly agreed national shared priorities and locally determined objectives in ways tailored to local circumstances.

Local councils are well placed to exercise community leadership, judge competing claims for resources and hold to account those in government, quangos and the private sector whose decisions impinge on the citizens whom they serve. Sir Jeremy Beecham Chairman, Local Government Association

Jackie Ashley is right to warn that the simplistic and uncritical embrace of "localism" and decentralisation that now seems to be de rigueur across the political spectrum may be reactionary in its ultimate effects. But she is wrong to subsume Gordon Brown's interest in spreading the civil service more evenly around the country's regions within the same trend. Administrative and geographical centralism are not the same thing, and need not go together.

The historical concentration of national governmental functions in London is one the reasons that the national integration, coordination and accountability of public services (which can be essential to advancing equity, universality and the public interest) now has such a bad name. "Decentring the centre" may be a way of making it more responsive without dismantling its necessary regulative and redistributive powers. Martin McIvor Director, Catalyst